I was amazed by China's behaviour in their trade war with Australia. They banned our coal. We were treated to the sight of Australia's coal transport ships as far as the eye could see sitting outside of China's ports. It caused havoc on the Australian side at the time, paying for all that shipping time, figuring out what to do with all the unwanted coal.<p>But China used that coal in their coal fired power stations. It was their winter. They were literally freezing in the dark. It went on for months.<p>FWIW, the usual take is Australia won that war. Australia didn't do anything in retaliation. We keep buying from China when they were cheapest, and busied ourselves by seeking out new markets for our products elsewhere. We would have been better off if it hadn't happened, but there was an upside - we developed new markets.<p>The trigger for all this was our then Prime Minister sided with Trump, in blaming China engineering COVID. True or not, poking the Pooh Bear like that was pure insanity. We got rid of that prime minister as soon at the next election.<p>Xi does take stands on principle, and he is willing to bear a lot of pain while doing so. If you doubt that, look at how he handled COVID. I don't think there can be much doubt that in a fight about principles between Trump and Xi, who is the most principled man. It isn't even close.